The end of MDM (as we know it). Or not.

I believe we’re starting to see the beginning of the end of the red hot MDM market. More and more network vendors are rolling out solutions for BYOD that make the traditional solutions somewhat of a commodity.

Now Zeus is talking about a new product from F5 that basically wraps apps before delivery to a mobile device, to ostensibly provide proper protection, authorization, etc. Hmmm. Sounds a lot like VDI to me. Or remote control. Or the zillion other technologies that are supposed to take devices out of the equation and manage applications and desktops and everything else remotely.

Let’s just say we have seen this movie before and device-centric management approaches continue to be alive and well. And I don’t have any doubt that MDM will be here for the foreseeable future to manage the configurations and hygiene of mobile devices. Will MDM be bundled into a broader endpoint and/or IT management suite? Absolutely. Everything is a feature (in time). Though some folks think this is very big market, as evidenced by AirWatch raising $200 MILLION.

Not that investors are always right, but that sounds like a market on the upswing. To say it’s the beginning of the end is, well, wrong. It’s the beginning of the beginning.

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